Chapter 3

Jack was introduced to a room of truly noble proportions, vast and
high, with a row of tall windows with round tops, looking down a narrow
street to the harbor. In the center was a flat-topped desk as big as a
banquet board and behind it sat a man, dwarfed in size by the vastness
of his surroundings–but immeasurably increased in significance. The
whole place focused in him.

Jack’s silken-tongued conductor announced him, and softly withdrew.
The man at the desk raised his head and bent a look of strong interest
and quizzical amusement on Jack. It was the face of a man well-assured
of his place in the world; serene and careless; a man who consorted on
equal terms with labor leaders and kings.

“So this is what you’re like!” he said.

The unexpected look of interest and the strange words instead of
heartening Jack had the contrary effect. His knees shook under him a
little, his mouth went dry.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Delamare, indicating a chair opposite him.

Jack obeyed, walking jerkily like an automaton.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I sent for you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have no idea?”

“No, sir.”

“I will tell you as soon as you have answered a few questions. I must
make sure first that I have got hold of the right man.”

He pulled out a drawer, and taking from it a typewritten sheet, read
his question from it.

“Your full name?”

“John Farrow Norman.”

“Parents living?”

“Both dead, sir.”

“Father’s name?”

“John Goadby Norman.”

“Mother’s name?”

“Phoebe Farrow.”

“Place of your birth?”

“Cartonsville, New York.”

There were other questions of a similar tenor, and Jack’s answers were
apparently satisfactory to Mr. Delamare. He folded the paper, and
searched in the drawer for something else. His next question was an
odd one.

“Are you wearing your father’s watch?”

“Why, yes,” stammered Jack.

It was the one article of value that he possessed. He unhooked it from
its chain and passed it over. The banker opened the back of the case
as if aware of what was to be found there, and the smiling face of
Jack’s mother as a bride was revealed. From the drawer he took an
old-fashioned cabinet photograph, and compared it with the picture in
the watch case.

Jack catching sight of the second picture was startled out of his
diffidence. “My mother’s picture! Where did you get that?”

Mr. Delamare showed him the two faces side by side. “Not the same
photograph, but unquestionably the same woman. You may have both now.”

He handed them over. The picture he had taken from the drawer showed
Jack’s mother at an earlier period, just graduating into womanhood with
all the touching innocence of youth about her. Jack’s eyes filled.

“What does it mean?” he murmured.

“One more question,” said Mr. Delamare. “Give me a brief account of
yourself as far back as you can remember.”

Jack did so, wonderingly, and the banker checked his story with another
typewritten sheet that he held.

“That will do,” he said at last. “I’m satisfied.”

“How did you learn all this?” asked Jack. “I didn’t think anybody in
the world was interested what jobs I had or where I lived.”

“One never knows,” was the smiling answer. “Write your name and I’ll
tell you.”

Jack obeyed. The banker compared it with a signature he had.

“Now then,” he said. “How would you like to be rich?”

Jack stared at him in a daze.

Delamare laughed. “Rich beyond the dreams of avarice! Worth eighty
million dollars in fact.”

“Eighty million!” muttered Jack stupidly.

“As you sit there this minute you are worth eighty million–perhaps
more.”

“Where–did I get it?” stammered Jack helplessly.

“Silas Gyde bequeathed you all he possessed.”

Jack’s face was a study in amazement, incredulity–not to say downright
alarm. At the sight Mr. Delamare threw back his head and laughed a
peal.

“Don’t take it so hard! You’ll live it down!”

“What was I to Silas Gyde?” murmured Jack.

“I don’t know the whole story. Mr. Gyde took no man on earth into his
confidence. I judge, though, that he was an unsuccessful suitor for
your mother. The affair must have cut deep, for he never married.”

“Eighty million!” murmured Jack, unable to grasp the idea of such a sum.

“Nearly five million a year; four hundred thousand a month; say
thirteen thousand a day.”

The figures had a convincing ring. The color stole back into Jack’s
cheeks, and a delicious warmth crept around his heart. He had no great
difficulty in believing his good fortune, because he had already
pictured it to himself in fancy. His first thought was of Kate. “I
can buy her anything now!”

For a moment or two he found nothing to say. Delamare seeing his eyes
become dreamy, smiled again. “Spending it already, I see!”

Jack blushed and descended to earth. “Please tell me all about it,” he
said.

“I’ll tell you what I know. As I said, I was not in Mr. Gyde’s full
confidence–no man was. Indeed I knew him but slightly. He was a good
customer of the bank, but he did everything in his own peculiar way.
He rented a large vault from us, and had the locks changed under his
own supervision. I believe he kept the major part of his securities
there, but he may have other vaults too.

“Some five years or so ago, he came to me saying he wanted to rent a
small lock box in our vaults, the kind that we get ten dollars a year
for. He was so insistent upon the necessity for secrecy that we
allowed him to have it under an assumed name. Another officer of the
bank and myself were taken into the secret. Mr. Gyde left me a
duplicate key to this box with instructions to open it if ever a day
passed without my hearing from him. I believe he used to visit the box
himself to make sure that I had not been tampering with it, but his
peculiarities were so well known, one didn’t mind that in him.

“Since then, every day of his life he dropped in here, or called me or
my secretary on the phone, just to report, he said. In the beginning I
often wondered why he had set himself such a task, but as time went on
it became a mere form, and at last I forgot how the custom had started.

“When word of his death was brought me day before yesterday, all
recollection of the small box had passed from my mind. My secretary
brought it back by remarking that the old gentleman’s daily report was
now at an end. I found the keys and opened the box. The papers were
sealed into the box itself, so that they could not be removed without
breaking the wax. Very characteristic of Mr. Gyde.

“The contents consisted of his will; detailed instructions to me how to
find you and identify you, and several keys which I was directed to
hand you. Here they are. And here is the will, a model of clearness
and brevity you see.”